Investing

How Elon Musk Lost $10 Billion Dollars Today

The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President
2025 Getty Images / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Shares of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) slid 6% today after Chinese rival BYD (OTC:BYDDY) unveiled DiPilot, an assisted capability that will integrate artificial intelligence features from Chinese AI lab DeepSeek.

The drop in TSLA stock caused CEO Elon Musk to lose $10.1 billion, one of his single-largest declines in net worth. Only an $18 billion loss at the end of January when Tesla missed earnings caused a bigger loss. Musk owns almost 410.8 million shares of TSLA stock.

24/7 Wall St. Insights:

  • Tesla (TSLA) stock dropped $22 per share, or 6.3%, shaving some $10 billion off of Elon Musk’s net worth.

  • Musk remains the world’s richest man, but analysts fear his divided attention amongst his many companies and projects are taking away his focus from Tesla.

  • If you’re looking for some stocks with huge potential, make sure to grab a free copy of our brand-new “The Next NVIDIA” report. It features a software stock we’re confident has 10X potential.

BYD, which surpassed Tesla as the world’s largest electric vehicle company by sales, has bodied Tesla for market share as the American EV maker continues to see weakness in the China market. Earlier this month, Tesla reported a 32.6% decline in January sales, according to the China Passenger Car Association. 

At the same time, BYD sales soared more than 47%. The introduction of DiPilot challenges Tesla’s Full-Self Driving technology and could further pressure sales in the world’s largest auto market.

A convergence of storms

Tesla and Musk face additional headwinds, too. President Trump announced he was raising tariffs on imported aluminum and steel to 25%, which could increase production costs of Tesla EVs.

China has also not responded to Trump’s increase in more broad-based tariff’s on imported goods from the country, which could impact Tesla if Beijing chooses to target the automaker. Canada, for example, has threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Teslas in response to Trump’s tariff threat, singling out the automaker because of his close association with Trump. 

Tesla, though, has manufacturing plants in China so retaliatory tariffs would not impact the EV company, but it did open an antitrust probe of Alphabet‘s (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) immediately after Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods.

Divided attention

Another concern analysts have is that Musk has launched a bid to buy OpenAI for $97 billion. While he is not putting up all the money himself as he did when he bought Twitter, rather assembling a group of investors, Wall Street is worried he is becoming too distracted to run Tesla.

Musk, of course, is also heading up Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency to root out waste and fraud in government spending. He is also running X and constantly posts to the platform. Musk also runs SpaceX and the Boring Company.

Since hitting an all-time high of almost $480 per share in December, TSLA stock has tumbled 32%. That means Musk has lost $62.85 billion in net worth.

Not that he still isn’t the world’s richest person. It was estimated by Forbes after the January plunge that he was still worth $203.6 billion. That put him $20 billion ahead of the second-richest person, Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (OTC:LVMUY). Today’s drop cuts that narrow lead in half.

Key takeaways

Musk has a lot of balls up in the air that he is juggling at the same time Tesla is facing intense competitive pressure. If TSLA stock drops further, if sales decline more, and it loses greater amounts of market share, investors and Tesla’s board may demand he give up some of his side projects.

While his relationship with Trump was seen as potentially boosting Tesla’s prospects, the EV market may have other ideas.

 

Get Ready To Retire (Sponsored)

Start by taking a quick retirement quiz from SmartAsset that will match you with up to 3 financial advisors that serve your area and beyond in 5 minutes, or less.

Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests.

Here’s how it works:
1. Answer SmartAsset advisor match quiz
2. Review your pre-screened matches at your leisure. Check out the advisors’ profiles.
3. Speak with advisors at no cost to you. Have an introductory call on the phone or introduction in person and choose whom to work with in the future

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.

AI Portfolio

Discover Our Top AI Stocks

Our expert who first called NVIDIA in 2009 is predicting 2025 will see a historic AI breakthrough.

You can follow him investing $500,000 of his own money on our top AI stocks for free.